=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #475
—January 4, 1996—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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THE SAGA OF PAPER MILL WASTE
It was 18 years ago, in 1978, when a small group of biologists
studying the Elevenmile Creek in Escandia County, Florida, were
“startled” (their word) to find a population of tiny mosquitofish
that all appeared to be males, even though some were pregnant and
were bearing normal offspring. [1] Somehow the female
mosquitofish had been changed to look like males; they had been
“masculinized.”
Mosquitofish are a small, minnow-like species, rarely exceeding 2
inches (46 mm) in length. In normal mosquitofish, the difference
between males and females is obvious. For one thing, males are
about half the size of females. For another, males have a long
specialized rear fin (called a gonopodium) that females lack,
which the males use to insert semen into females. A few days
after a female becomes fertilized, a dark spot appears on each
side of her abdomen and the spot grows as pregnancy proceeds.
Thus under normal circumstances, it is easy to tell male and
female mosquitofish apart because they look nothing like each
other. But in the Elevenmile River in Florida in 1978, the
mosquitofish all had a male’s gonopodium –even the pregnant
females with the telltale spot. Furthermore, the female
mosquitofish with a gonopodium behaved like males. They tried to
copulate with other females. Further study revealed that a few
members of the masculinized population were fully hermaphroditic
–having sex organs of both male and female in a single
individual. In 1981, a population of mosquitofish on the
Fenholloway River in Florida was discovered with the same odd
sexual characteristics. [2]
Odd indeed. During the past 100 years, ichthyologists
(scientists who study fish) have collected and examined thousands
of specimens of mosquitofish and no report has appeared of
masculinization, hermaphroditism, or sex reversal (males turning
into females or the other way around). [3] Yet here in two rivers
in the Florida panhandle were entire populations of mosquitofish
with this extraordinary physical change.
The cause was easy to find. Both rivers received enormous,
dark-colored discharges from paper mills, discharges about equal
to the entire flow of the rivers (25 million gallons per day
(MGD) in the Elevenmile, and 50 MGD in the Fenholloway).
Examining fish above and below these discharge points revealed
immediately that fish above were all normal and fish below were
all masculinized. An open and shut case of cause and effect.
But what in the paper mill waste was causing the problems? Paper
mill waste contains between 250 and 300 chemicals, including
dissolved organics, methanol, turpenes, acetone, fatty acids,
cellulose decomposition products, lignins and tannins, sulphides,
mercaptans, resin-acids, soaps, chlorine, and caustic soda, among
others. [4]
Looking into the problem, researchers found studies dating from
1940 and 1941 in which mosquitofish had been masculinized by
exposure to testosterone, the most common male sex hormone. So
they reasoned that something in the paper mill waste was probably
acting like a male sex hormone. But what? It seems like a
simple question, but it is not.
This problem has been a scientific political football for 15
years. Two parallel tracks of research have been proceeding:
dioxin and chlorinated chemicals have been investigated, and
naturally-occurring hormone-mimicking chemicals from plants
(phytoestrogens) have been investigated.
Dioxin Research
By 1970, there were many reports circulating which linked dioxin
to various human reproductive problems, chiefly birth defects. [5]
In 1980, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] discovered
dioxins and furans in paper mill waste. In 1983, dioxin was
found in fish living downstream from paper mills. [6]
This was not a welcome finding. The volume of paper mill wastes
is huge: in the 1980s, each ton of pulp produced about 25,000
gallons of contaminated wastewater from the chlorine-bleaching
process. [7] With 73 million tons of paper products produced in
1986, [8] bleaching wastes totaled approximately 1.83 trillion
gallons of chlorinated gunk per year –a total waste flow of 219
cubic meters per second [cms]. This flow is larger than some
major rivers –larger than the Merrimack in Massachusetts (flow:
205 cms), larger than the James in Virginia (flow: 184 cms),
larger than Brazos in Texas (flow: 207 cms), and larger than the
Rogue in Oregon (flow: 182 cms). [9]
In addition to being immensely wasteful, the paper industry is
politically very powerful, with 674,000 people employed in the
industry (a 1986 figure), with U.S. mills producing products
valued at $3.9 billion each year. [10] This powerful force has
spent untold millions diverting attention away from its
dioxin-laden discharges.
During the early Reagan years, top EPA officials did their part
to prevent recognition of the nation’s dioxin problem; EPA chief
Anne Burford and her assistant, Rita Lavelle, were eventually
fired for dioxin-related shenanigans, and Burford’s successor,
John Hernandez, resigned in disgrace after a Congress
investigated his role in the altering of a report on dioxin in
the Great Lakes. [11] Congress then appropriated $4 million for a
nationwide study of dioxin in the environment. Preliminary data
from that study, available in 1985, clearly implicated pulp and
paper mills in dioxin contamination of waterways in Minnesota and
Maine, and of fish living downstream from paper mills.
It was paper industry officials who muscled EPA chief William
Reilly in early 1991, persuading him to initiate a multi-year
“scientific reassessment” of dioxin, which EPA promptly got
underway in April, 1991, and which the agency has still not
concluded. During the course of that “reassessment,” information
has come to light showing beyond any doubt that dioxin mimics
hormones and disrupts the endocrine (reproductive) system of
fish, birds, mammals, and most likely humans as well. (See REHW #290,
#390, #391, #414, AND #457.)
Research on Natural Phytoestrogens
The other line of research proceeded in a less
politically-charged atmosphere. Scientists had first reported
naturally-occurring hormone-mimicking chemicals in plants
(phytoestrogens) in 1948 when female sheep became sterile after
grazing on clover pastures for prolonged periods in Australia. [12]
In 1976, researchers in California had shown that certain desert
plants in dry years produce chemicals that inhibit reproduction
in the California quail. These researchers developed the
hypothesis that plants produce such chemicals as a defense
against predators; if predators eat too much of such substances,
they become sterile, thus reducing the predator population. [13]
In 1979, it was shown that a common estrogen-mimicking chemical
in woody plants –beta-sitosterol –could affect the reproductive
system of rabbits. [14] By the mid-1980s, researchers
demonstrated similar effects of beta-sitosterol on mice and rats.
In 1991, the Wingspread Conference occurred (see REHW #263 and
#264), and studies of paper mill effluent began to multiply, many
of them by Canadian researcher Glen Van Der Kraak, who attended
Wingspread. [15,16,17,18]
Van Der Kraak and his colleagues have shown that some wild fish
living downstream from pulp and paper mills reach sexual maturity
much later than normal. Other species such as the lake whitefish
can be sterilized by living below a pulp mill. Others have
exceptionally small reproductive organs and abnormally low levels
of sex hormones in the blood.
In 1995, Van Der Kraak pointed out that pulp mill waste contains
280 to 1200 parts per billion (ppb) of beta-sitosterol, from the
bark of the trees being turned into pulp. It is the same
beta-sitosterol that has been shown to affect the reproductive
systems of rabbits, mice, rats, and sheep. Furthermore, in 1995
Van Der Kraak injected goldfish with beta-sitosterol and showed
that the levels of sex hormones in their blood were significantly
altered. [19] Industry is already arguing [20] that synthetic
(human-created) chemicals couldn’t possibly be affecting sexual
reproduction and development in wildlife and humans, as many
scientists now believe they are. (For example, see REHW #446,
#447, #448.) No doubt, Van Der Kraak’s
1995 goldfish study,
emphasizing the role of naturally-occurring compounds, will
become ammunition for those who need a rationale for continuing
to poison wildlife and people with synthetic chlorine compounds.
However, even Van Der Kraak doesn’t believe naturally-occurring
phytoestrogens explain all the problems seen in wildlife exposed
to paper mill wastes. “I don’t think beta-sitosterol is going to
explain the entire picture,” Van Der Kraak told Janet Raloff of
SCIENCE NEWS. [21] Fish downstream from pulp mills frequently
exhibit detoxifying liver enzymes, “and we’re not seeing that
with beta-sitosterol,” he says. “So there must be other
chemicals the fish are exposed to–such as some chlorinated
organics–[activating] those enzymes,” he says. In other words,
the trail once again leads back to dioxin and other
chlorine-containing wastes.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
===============
[1] William P. Davis and Stephen A. Bortone, “Effects of Kraft
Mill Effluent on the Sexuality of Fishes: An Environmental Early
Warning?” in Theo Colborn and Coralie Clement, editors,
CHEMICALLY-INDUCED ALTERATIONS IN SEXUAL AND FUNCTIONAL
DEVELOPMENT: THE WILDLIFE/HUMAN CONNECTION [Advances in Modern
Environmental Toxicology Vol. XXI] (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
Scientific Publishing Co., 1992), pgs. 113-127.
[8]] See John Andelin and others, cited above, pg. 5.
[10] See John Andelin and others, cited above, pg. 5.
[11] See Carol van Strum and Paul Merrell, cited above, Chapter V.
Descriptor terms: paper; paper industry; chlorine; dioxin;
phytoestrogens; estrogen; reproductive disorders; birth defects;
water pollution; fl; fish; wildlife; endocrine disrupters;
hormones; anne burford; rita lavelle; john hernandez; ronald
reagan; epa; dioxin reassessment; beta-sitosterol; glen van der
kraak;